Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 25

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Cummings and Dawson finished their visit and disappeared. The impression faded in the resumption of the busy, charming, carefree life of the rancho. No uneasiness of change could long persist against the settled and immemorial quality of tradition. Spanish-American civilization on the Pacific Coast was actually less than a hundred years old, but its impression was of a ripe permanence derived from many centuries. That illusion, if illusion it be, is even today peculiar to the country. California’s time ratio differs from that of the rest of the world. It is a cross section of history, passing in a single century, without haste, without abridgments, without omissions, through the phases of a social evolution that in other countries has taken a thousand years. Today the buildings of the missions stand monument to a venerable antiquity comparable to that which invests the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Yet many an unremarked New England farmhouse had been standing for generations before their first stone was laid.

It was, in a way, a curious double-consciousness of time. For though each era—that of discovery, of conquest, of the nomadic, of pioneering, of the pastoral, and so on into the agricultural and finally the modern—was destined to develop and flower and pass within the memory of two long-lived generations, each possessed in its own consciousness that due sense of space and dignity of permanence necessary to its ripening. So now this pastoral interlude seemed, to those carrying it forward, borne in the current of uncounted years. If change it must, that change was destined in a future so remote that its outlines were obscure.

Nevertheless, in the paradox of time ratio, the years sped fast. And pleasantly. Andy’s property increased. Sometimes he remembered with a smile one of the old daydreams of his early years, a projection of his boy’s imagination stirred by his first approach, after the terrible crossing of the Cimarron, to the unknown romance of old Santa Fe. The details arose vividly from his subconscious. For a brief interval, under the spell of that little devil Estrellita, he had in fancy shamelessly abandoned his companions, the mountain men. He had seen himself in velvet and linen and silver lace riding gravely a coal-black steed, and people bowing to him and respectfully greeting him as Don Americano, the wealthy hidalgo; and an adobe mansion with roses; and peones running to hold his stirrup; and an interior, polished, simple, and richly dim, where a girl waited; and an atmosphere of grave, worshipful, very Spanish dignity of which Don Andrew, the americano, was the center, with, he remembered, clipped side whiskers down the cheek. Andy grinned at the picture. It had not lasted long. It had faded in the wild years. Now it returned. And it was not so far off after all. The details had pretty well fulfilled themselves—except for the side whiskers which he had sacrificed at the time he had cut his hair.

Life was varied enough, in spite of its basic simplicity. The cattle, the flour mill, the wine-making, a hundred small activities. The routine plentifully and pleasantly broken. Visits to the hacienda that lasted a week or more. Anniversaries and fiestas of all kinds. Excursions to Monterey on business that were made to include many pleasures. He and Carmel, and Ramón and Conchita, enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They celebrated Holy Week with a grand mixture of churchgoing and merrymaking, ending with a solemn procession from the cuartel to the plaza escorting a cart in which was a ridiculous effigy of Judas bound. Soldiers escorted him. The bystanders hooted him and pelted him with pebbles and handfuls of dry adobe. He was propped up below a gibbet and lectured at by sundry magníficos who accused him of all sorts of things, including the robbing of hen roosts, stealing old clothes, and cheating at cards. At the close of the lecture he was solemnly asked if he had anything to say in his defense. The populace waited, breathless; but as, naturally, Judas remained silent, judgment was delivered against him. He was hanged on the gibbet. The soldiers delivered one disciplined volley into his body at command; after which they fired at will. There was for this purpose never lack of powder and ball. They popped away, to their own huge delight and that of the bystanders. Soon there was no more Judas. The concourse attended Mass and then scattered to its pleasure. The gente de razón danced, and the men and women sought opportunities undetected to break cascarones—eggshells filled with gilt confetti or cologne—over one another’s heads. The maneuvers to this end were very spirited. Andy created a laughing furore by seizing and soundly kissing his assailants, which was decidedly a rather scandalous innovation. Andy was no longer serio.

Christmas was a more decorous festival, with a good deal of church in it, and the giving of presents, and feasts at which one partook of an especial delicacy made at no other time, a round cake something like a doughnut, called a buenuelero. These two festivals, and Santos Inocentes, were the big events of the year. The latter was great fun, a sort of combined April fool and game of forfeits. Anyone who could be beguiled into lending anyone anything must redeem the article on the borrower’s terms. The more unlikely or difficult the object borrowed, the greater the triumph. Conchita and Carmel carried off the honors, the one by borrowing money of a broker, the other his own rosary from a priest. There were innumerable more personal gatherings, weddings, christenings, or the like. Carmel’s sister, Faquita, revised her announced determination to become a nun and was married to Carlos Lugo. Andy was astonished to realize she had grown up. Ramón and Conchita moved to a rancho of their own on the Jolón plateau. There were always new babies.

They returned to the rancho and its work and its simple pleasures very much refreshed.

Djo learned to shoot. This was considered a quaint and useless accomplishment by everybody but Andy. He began with the old Boone gun rested over a stump. But shortly one of the Boston ships brought a little rifle ordered long before by Andy from Ike Hawkens in St. Louis, an exact replica in miniature of the weapons then in use on the great plains. It was a beautiful piece of work and may still be seen in a private collection of arms. Djo became a very good rifle shot and did considerable execution among the ground squirrels and jack rabbits. These were available at all months of the year, for they were pests; but Andy taught Djo that serious game, except in necessity, should be sought only in the hunting moons. Djo was still too small to go afield alone; but when autumn came he and his father did considerable sneaking about after the band-tail pigeons that swarmed to the ripened acorns. These were good to eat, and a triumph to bring down. Some day, Andy promised, he would take Djo to the higher country to shoot a buck. That time, Andy determined, should be when Djo was big enough to handle the Boone gun. His own little rifle was too light for heavy game, except in the hands of an expert. The balls ran some hundred and twenty to the pound. Andy had a strong aversion to wounding animals, which was a curious sentiment in that day and age.